Cameron Bright is pretty and popular, but brutally honest. Her crappy home life is no excuse for failure so Cameron works hard and chases her goals: date crush Andrew, get an internship at her father's office, and get into the Wharton School at UPenn. But when Andrew calls her a bitch, her normal teflon-tough exterior chips. Like Katherine in Taming of the Shrew, does she need to be tamed?
A millenial teen retelling of the film 10 Things I Hate About You that draws heavily from Shakespeare, If I'm Being Honest is crafted with thoughtful, real-world stakes. Cameron's a ringer for Blair Waldorf - and yet she genuinely learns from her mistakes and works to become a better person. Her social circle is rooted in relatable struggles like making new friends, keeping old friendships alive, being supportive, and managing conflict. She's flawed and *almost* unlikeable but the more I learned about her family dynamics, the more I rooted for her to make better choices and follow a path of her own making.
Amazing characters and regional history. One of my top 10 books of the year.
You can feel the twelve years it took to create this intricate and ingenious contrivance of a comic, in which Chris Ware mines familiar themes of alienation, longing, and being a poorly socialized misfit that gets beaten up by jocks using an extraordinarily sophisticated comics syntax that rewards multiple rereadings.
I love this book because Louv doesn’t lecture the reader. The focus is not on what we might be doing wrong, but on all the ways humans and other animals have done well together—and why. It covers childhood pets, wild encounters, studies of our mutual makeup, ways of communicating, and more! If anything, this combination of diverse anecdotes and research encourages awe and open observation when we connect with nature, and an acknowledgement of the benefits therein.
For every young creative who is just trying to find their place in the world. Reading this feels like you’re reading the diary of your best friend.
This is the cookbook of the season. Buy it for newlyweds, buy it for yourself, buy it for babies who will probably cook in the future.
I recommend sinking into The Starless Sea and luxuriating there. This is not a book to rush. The scope is enormous, the plot is stranger and intricate. This book will take you may places and you'll have to trust it but you should you're in very good hands. I found it delicious and rewarding.
If Haruki Murikami had been born in Mexico and raised in southern Texas, this is the book he would have written. It's futuristic and hallucinogenic look at that region gives us a unique and welcome lens to view the border.
A classic collection has been given a new makeover. This stylish edition has been stuff with gorgeous new illustrations by a highly curated selection of artists. A perfect gift for the young (or the young at heart) artist/book collector/designer/folktale enthusiast on your list.
"Women have been retrieving each other from the Dustbin of history for several thousand years now..."
Jacky Fleming is doing just that with this work of wit. In it we are confronted with the laughable ideas about women held by male 'geniuses' of the past, ideas that have facilitated the erasure of women's voices and accomplishments throughout history. Dripping with sarcasm and accompanied by charming illustrations, this is an easy laugh out loud read that you will want to share.
